Sundance festival shines on Bay Area filmmakers

Two San Francisco organizations are well represented in the recently announced 2019 Sundance Film Festival program. The Independent Television Service, a nonprofit that funds and distributes documentaries for public television, has four films screening at Sundance. SFFilm, the organization that puts on the San Francisco International Film Festival and offers an array of grants and services to independent filmmakers, has seven films, a blend of documentaries and narratives, premiering at Sundance.

Among the ITVS films making their Sundance debuts are “Always in Season,” former Bay Area resident Jacqueline Olive’s account of the impact of lynching in the U.S., and “Midnight Traveler,” Hassan Fazili’s documentary focusing on his own family’s flight from Afghanistan.

Local filmmaker Joe Talbot, who first took part in SFFilm educational programs, became a FilmHouse resident and received three SFFilm Rainin grants, premieres his first feature, “The Last Black Man in San Francisco,” at Sundance. Among the other SFFilm projects making their bows are “Honeyland,” a Macedonian documentary about beekeepers, and “The Sound of Silence,” the winner of the first SFFilm Dolby Fellowship giving a small independent film the rare opportunity to concentrate on sound design.

“Easy” win: Andrea Magnani’s feature debut, “Easy,” took home the N.I.C.E. New Italian Cinema festival City of Florence Award, The black comedy is about a former go-kart driver who gets a shot at redemption when his brother gets him a job ferrying the body of a migrant worker to his homeland in Ukraine. The award, voted on by audiences, is given to first- or second-time filmmakers.

SFFilm grants: A grifter takes on a new role as the defender of Oakland Chinatown in writer-director Pete Lee’s “Sandy Song, The High Priestess of Souls,” and a man deported to Mexico, a country he’s never known, begins to question the idea of home in Pedro González Kuhn’s “Kee-kay.” These are two films among seven to receive grants in the latest round of SFFilm Rainin funding for films at the development, screenwriting or post-production stages.